I don’t.
He’s a doctoral student in chemical engineering at UMass Amherst. His research is in biofuels and sustainable energy. I know that sounds all “hip” and “responsible” of him, but all that means is he’s nearing thirty with no job and hours upon hours in a lab. Sure, we get a decent stipend to live on, and full financial aid; but it still leaves me with a twenty-nine year old husband who has no job. I slap my former grad student self for bragging his major up to my parents. They loved it. So did I. Then, everything changed.
“Nat, you okay? Natalie?” Eric walks over and shuts off the faucet I left running while I stare out the window. I hate when he calls me “Nat”, it sounds like a bug whenever he says it.
“Huh? Shit, sorry, I spaced.”
I reach for a towel to dry my hands when Eric’s tanned hand wraps around my much paler arm.
“What happened to your arm? That’s a huge scratch.” Those honey-brown eyes, one thing left that I don’t resent, tell me they can’t handle the truth. He’d never get it.
“Stupid cat.” I shrug and tug my arm away.
“Maybe we should get rid of her, that’s the second time this month she’s torn your arm up.” He kisses my cheek, right by my ear. For a second I remember what it felt like the first time he did that. Then I remember everything that happened after that kiss.
“It’s fine.” I shake my head and pull away. “I tried to give a her a bath, serves me right.”
Eric laughs just under his breath. “Want some wine?”
“Badly,” I sigh.
Well, that was easy.
Eric slides me a glass of white. I hate white. “What were the boys up to today?”
That doesn’t stop me from drinking it. “What happens after graduation?” I ignore his request for information on our children.
“What do you mean?” He sits back against the couch.
“I mean ajob, Eric. It’s been a long time—”
“Oh Jesus, Nat, not this again.” He rolls his eyes and walks back into the kitchen. “How many times do we have to goover this? I would have been done two years ago—”
“Yeah, I know. Trust me, I know. You would have been done two years ago if we hadn’t had twins in the middle of everything. You graciously demoted yourself to a part-time student while I became afull-timemom.” I swallow the rest of my wine and walk to the kitchen to pour another glass. “Do you want my list about how the last two years would have gone? Screw that, do you want to know how the last four years would have gone?”
“Enlighten me, please.” Eric holds out his hands, as if to give me the floor. We’re speaking in whisper-yells to avoid waking the identical monsters down the hall.
“You’re the one who wanted them, Eric. You’re the one who begged me to keep them, to pull out of that parking lot and come home.” He winces under my tone, but I continue, “Yet, somehow, I leave my degree program to raise them while you play mad scientist in Goessmann. I point out the window in the general direction of campus.
Eric bows his head; placing his hands on his hips while he takes a careful breath. When he looks up, his face is a mess of exhaustion. We’ve had this argument almost every single day for the last two years. For every single minute of the last two years since he returned as a full-time student, I’ve hated him. I’ve said it, too, I hate you. But he just thinks I’m crazy or stressed when I say it. I am. And it’s because of him.
It’s because of him and his assertion of “the right thing to do” that I find myself staring past his jet black hair that needs to be cut, past the athletic physique that makes him stand out amongst his colleagues like he’s just there to pretty up the department, and find myself fantasizing about those little blades twenty-five feet away in the bathroom. Hidden in an empty tampon box.
*
I didn’t always hate him. In fact, the first time we met it was something else entirely. In April 2005 I was preparing to graduate from Mount Holyoke College. South Hadley, Massachusetts had provided a picturesque existence for me over the previous four years. I’d only applied to UMass Amherst for graduate programs; I was more than academically qualified, and their anthropology program is great, but I really just wanted to call this place “home” for a while longer.
“Yo, Natalie, over here.” Tosha waved me down at the front of the Odyssey Bookstore, where she was cashing out. I was glad that UMass was only a short drive from here because I loved that bookstore.
I approached Tosha’s petite frame as she tried to sell some of her text books. “Did they take anything back?”
“Just the novels,” she shrugged, “it’s something.” Tosha threw her curly blonde hair into a ponytail while she waited for the cashier.
“You want to go to Antonio’s for lunch?”
Tosha shrugged. “All the way in Amherst?”